"Yes, I wanted that, and something else besides. I've been worried about the thing for a week, your reverence, and haven't breathed a word of it to a living soul; but I can't help it, I must tell your reverence."
"Tell me, then. What is it?"
Wolfram glanced towards the door, and then, approaching the priest, said, almost in a whisper,--
"'Tis Michael,--Captain Rodenberg, I mean. The next thing he'll snatch the sun from the sky if he takes it into his head to want it. What he's at now is not much less. It will make no end of a fuss in the Count's family. The general will rage and scold, and then Michael will be down upon him just as he was before. Oh, he'll stop at nothing."
"Are you talking of Michael?" Valentin asked, bewildered. "He went to town long ago; my brother has just brought me a message from him."
"That may be. I only know about the night of the storm. When I took the servant whom I found to the mountain chapel, as had been agreed, I left him there and went some distance towards the Eagle ridge just at day-dawn, in hopes of finding some trace of the captain or the Countess. I really did not think that I should ever see either of them again alive. But after a while I saw them both on a rock, and they were very much alive: he kissed her!"
"What!" exclaimed the pastor, recoiling.
"No wonder your reverence is shocked. I was too, but I saw it with my bodily eyes. He, Michael,--Captain Rodenberg I mean,--had his arm around the Countess's waist, and he kissed her. I thought the world had come to an end."
Valentin would probably have thought the same had he not been in some measure prepared for the revelation; therefore he was more troubled than surprised as he said, more to himself than to the man, "It has come to a declaration, then. I feared this."
"And the young Countess seemed very well pleased; she made no objection at all. They neither of them saw or heard me, but I plainly heard him say 'My Hertha!'--quite as if she belonged to him; and she betrothed to the young Count! Now, I ask your reverence, what is to be done? That boy was always at some mischief. And he's at it still. He'll never be content with a kiss; he'll marry the Countess right out of the midst of her ancestors and her millions. If they won't give her to him he'll shoot the young Count, send the general and all the family to the right about, turn every one out of doors, and carry off 'his Hertha' from the castle, just as he got her away from the Eagle ridge, and marry her. Ah, your reverence, I know him!"